A lawsuit was filed Monday by a coalition of medical associations alleged Bob Kennedy Jr. violated the law and imperiled public health when he withdrew some recommendations about coronavirus vaccines. Via the Washington Post:
The lawsuit against Kennedy and other top government health officials seeks to overturn the health secretary’s decision in May to end the government’s long-standing blanket recommendation that children and pregnant women should receive the shots.
The reversal has made it difficult for some pregnant women to get vaccinated to protect themselves and their future children, according to the health groups that filed the lawsuit. Medical professionals rely on — and are sometimes legally bound by — federal vaccine recommendations to decide whom to immunize.
Basically, insurance won’t cover payment for vaccines without a CDC recommendation –and the cost without insurance can run a couple of hundred dollars per shot. Obviously, many people can’t afford it.
That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine joined forces to file this lawsuit.
Their lawsuit escalates efforts by public health organizations to preserve access to vaccines that are now under scrutiny by Kennedy, who founded an anti-vaccine organization.
“He’s actively undermining vaccine safety and efficacy and confidence in vaccines by everything he’s done,” said Georges C. Benjamin, the leader of the American Public Health Association, one of the plaintiffs.
In an email, HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon said “the secretary stands by his CDC reforms.” HHS has previously defended Kennedy’s rollback of coronavirus vaccine recommendations, arguing that he was “taking urgent action to ensure the public’s safety when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines.”
